It’s a brand new app that will hit the App Store within the next week or two. I’ve been messing around trying out a TestFlight version of this app most of the day today and I would like to share my review with you.

Interface:
First off, the name of the app is called Discasaurus. This is a score tracking disc golf app unlike any other I’ve come across out there. Its interface is very user-friendly and has a nice, polished look to all the graphics. A lot of the free disc golf apps I’ve used before have crappy graphics and appear as if they were thrown together in Microsoft Paint. Not this one. I really like its web 2.0 look and feel. The text is very legible and the buttons are large—great for those with clumsy thumbs and on-the-fly scoring.

Now let me take a few minutes to introduce and walk you through this handy app. You’ll be able to set up and start using this app by the time you reach the end of this article. Bet.

Getting Started: Setup
The setup process maybe takes 3-5 minutes, so here it goes! To get started, you’ll need to upload the course directory for your state. This is quick and very easy to do. From the main screen, you’ll go to “Settings” and hit “Update Course Directory.” Simply find your state and hit update. I was impressed by how quickly the courses loaded. When I selected Georgia, it was a mere 4 sec and boom!, loaded. You’ll probably be prompted to allow GPS location so it can find nearby courses for your area. From there, select your course and choose between the Blue or White tees, then hit “Start.”

At some point it will ask you to enter your name, email address and choose a disc color. I would recommend taking a few extra minutes and sign up on Discasaurus.com (This will be extra beneficial later. Hold your horses, I’ll get to that part later.) =)

Starting a Round: Scoring
Now you’re ready to start! Scoring on this app is very intuitive—simply tap the screen for each shot you took. ie. If you scored a par, tap the screen 3 times. One thing that was confusing to me was how to correct your scoring if you messed up. I tend to type/tap fast and I accidentally tapped one too many strokes for a particular hole. At first, I couldn’t figure out how to reset the hole but after playing around several minutes, tapping everything possible and visible on the screen, I finally figured it out. Simply press down on the screen for 2 seconds and it will reset that hole. Upon later troubleshoot, I found two more ways to correct the scoring. 1) Two-finger touch decreases score by one stroke; 2) Three-finger touch resets the score too with a vibration. However, I do wish there was some sort of Tutorial that had a few quick instructions on setting up/scoring. It’s all pretty straightforward, but that confusion earlier created a slight roadblock for me.

To advance to the next hole, just swipe your finger to the left and you’ll jump to the next hole. You can go back a hole by swiping your finger to the right.

Get ready for this. Some of the best is yet to come! When you finish out the 18th screen, you have the option of submitting your score to Discasaurus’ website. This is where the Sign Up from earlier will come into play.

Expand the Experience! Submit Your Score to Discasaurus.com!
I told you the best is yet to come and I wasn’t lying. Once you’ve signed up with a free account on Discasaurus.com, you have the ability to submit your round scores directly from the app. But that’s not all, there are LOTS more of cool stuff on the site available with your free account. By signing up, you’ll be able to create your own personal profile. You can choose a username and upload a picture to attach to your own profile. You can even set your city and state AND add your favorite courses as well to it.

Connect with friends and other Discasaurus users from across the nation! See their recent scores, profiles, and favorite courses. Check out the course directory to find courses, scores, and pics of courses in your area. They even post leaderboards and recent scores for every course on there, awesome! Keep track of all your rounds and see how well you stand up with other fellow Discasaurus app fanatics! Another neat feature I’ve never seen before is the profile widget (see pic on right). You can paste this anywhere on the web. It tracks your average rounds/scores for friends to see. Well worth checking out, you won’t be sorry. Look for it in the app store soon, Discasaurus!
-jt

6 Responses

Atrain

not working!! I hit update course directory and the progress bar shows up finishes, and nothing. Never displays what state to download. No courses is probably why the start button doesn’t work from the New Game screen.

I’m one of the developers of Discasaurus. Thanks for the feedback! The problem you describe is a known issue that will be fixed as soon as Apple approves our latest app store submission. That time ranges from 24 hours to 3 weeks, so please bear with us.

NOTE that once you have selected the active players for a game, you have to swipe the screen sideways to select a course location and layout. After you do that, hitting Start will bring up the scoring interface. Sorry for the confusion on that. Also, if you increment a score too much, you can tap and hold on that player tile to reset that player’s score to zero for a given hole.

On the version I have, no it does not. This may be something the developers are looking into with later releases of the app. I’ll let Dave at Discasaurus know though! He should have more feedback for ya on that. Thanks for reading.

Forgive my late response. I didn’t realize there were new comments here…. I’m one of the Discasaurus developers and I just wanted to let you know that an international course directory is something we’ve wanted for some time now. That may not be the good news you were hoping for, but honestly, I’m not sure when we’ll be ready to tackle that task. However, here’s a thought… for what it’s worth: Why not try to crowdsource the whole operation? I.e. focus on creating a kick-ass course creation interface.